It’s fascinating to watch artists respond to Dickinson’s work: playwrights, choreographers, letterpress artisans, visual artists, and yurt builders have used Dickinson’s poems as a springboard for their own creativity. Now through November 29, the AIA Gallery in Baltimore presents architectural renderings by Don Cook that use Dickinson’s poems as their foundation (quite literally). According to Deborah McLeod’s review in the Baltimore City Paper, Cook explains:
“Using [Dickinson's] syllabic grid as a floor plan, I assigned upright, load bearing values to the rhyme, alliteration and refrain patterns–and was startled to discover that, from an architectural standpoint, many of her poems were able to support a roof . . . the sketches that grew out of this investigation suggested a High Modernist glass box.”
The sketches are certainly more reminiscent of the Mies van der Rohe house in Barcelona than the Homestead or Evergreens in Amherst. But their clean lines and careful structure draw attention to the architecture inherent in Dickinson’s poems; like the short, spare lines of her verse, Cook’s imaginary houses have not an extra pane or beam to distract from the structure.
You can read more about this work at BmoreArt and Urbanite. And if you’re interested in having one of these poems built, Cook says that he is “interested in the opportunity of building full-scale pavilions based on these translations.”
Tags: care, house, Life, november, poem, sing, spring, star, winter


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October 25, 2007 at 10:18 am
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January 12, 2008 at 10:54 am
Krissy
I am trying to find the poem called the glass house or the solitary woman in a glass house. I did it for a forensics reading about 25 years ago in high school and my daughter would like to do it now buy we can not find the poem any where. Can you help me?
Krissy
June 10, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Gabriella Adams
I also like to make poems and read lots of books that is related to Poetry.;:*
January 28, 2011 at 11:28 am
yurt
i LOVE that your threw in \yurt builders.\ she was the best writer!